International Journal of Communication 13(2019), Book Review 649–652 1932–8036/2019BKR0009

Laurie Ouellette and Jonathan Gray (Eds.), Keywords for Media Studies, New York, NY: New York
University Press, 2017, 229 pp., $27.00 (paperback), $89.00 (hardcover).

Reviewed by
Lingyu Wang
New York University, USA

What is the discipline of media studies? This is a common

question that many students and emerging scholars encounter
when they first step into the multitude of works done within the
field; it is also a tough question, because media studies has evolved
to cover theories and topics originating in so many distinct
disciplines, ranging from communication theory to film theory,
queer theory, gender studies, ethnography, sociology, technology
history, and so on. In Keywords for Media Studies, editors
Laurie Ouellette and Jonathan Gray join forces with many
established media scholars to provide a manageable answer to this
big question. Part of the New York University (NYU) Press Keywords series (which has published eight titles
for different subjects), this book bears the legacy of Raymond Williams’ Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture
and Society (1985), and aims to draw an updated mind map of media studies for students and emerging
scholars (p. 1).

Structurally, Keywords for Media Studies, the book at hand, covers 65 keywords in critical media
studies, with an introduction by the editors. Each keyword has a different author, and is explained in an
article about three to four pages long, on average. Each article examines the historical and sometimes
etymological backgrounds of the keyword, introduces its current state, and lays out influential works and
figures that have contributed to its varied understandings. Following such discussion, many articles further
look at the future of their respective topics, pointing to research questions that are yet to be answered.

These brief yet informative articles thus allow a reader to quickly grasp the most important
moments in the long history of a keyword, and understand the most relative discussions that are still going
on today. For students and scholars who are new to the field and have just encountered an unfamiliar
concept, these articles will answer their most urgent questions in short; those who already know the basics
of some topics may also use the book as a quick reference, or a guide to those less familiar topics; for a
general reader who is just curious about media studies, the articles are short enough for leisure readings,
but long enough for a quality learning experience. The bottom line is, as a quick-start manual for media
studies, Ouellette and Gray’s Keywords neatly answers the question, “What are those people talking about?”

Among “Keywords”

Keywords for Media Studies is not alone among keywords books. Since the first publishing of
Williams’ Keywords in 1973, more than a dozen “keywords” books have emerged. Ouellette and Gray named
two in their introduction: New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Bennett, Grossberg,

Copyright © 2019 (Lingyu Wang, lingyu.wang@outlook.com). Licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at http://ijoc.org.
650 Lingyu Wang International Journal of Communication 13(2019), Book Review

Morris, & Williams, 2005) and Communication, Cultural and Media Studies: The Key Concepts (Hartley,
2011). There is also Benjamin Peters’ 2016 Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society and
Culture, which covers in more detail a shorter list of keywords specifically related to digital culture. Other
subject fields that media studies sometimes crosses over also have their own genealogy of “keywords.” Just
within the NYU Press series, seven other titles have been published for subjects including African American
studies, American culture studies, and disability studies. Wiley has also published a Keywords in Literature
and Culture series mainly for literary studies.

Besides keywords books, subject-specific dictionaries also provide more comprehensive yet less
detailed mind maps for students and scholars. Recent works in this category include Dictionary of Media and
Communication by Daniel Chandler and Rod Munday (2011; one of Oxford University Press’s subject
dictionaries), and Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies by James Watson and Anne Hill (2016;
among other subject dictionaries from Bloomsbury). While being less readable as a book, subject dictionaries
provide “material” information related to the media industry, prominent media companies, media text
formats, etc. Another tool that is similarly useful is the encyclopedia. Although professors often discourage
students from using encyclopedias, especially online ones like Wikipedia, many students new to the field
still find encyclopedia entries for scholarly concepts useful for learning. Particularly, the multilingual, online
collaborative nature of Wikipedia makes it much more versatile and accessible than printed books written
by a small subset of U.S.- or UK-based scholars.

Thus different reference tools and their contributors tend to focus on different use values and
different sets of concepts, based on format, subject, time period, school of thought, and so on. Therefore,
in practice, it is really the reader who decides which tool to use, depending on the reader’s own need or
interest. Still, for current media students and researchers, Ouellette and Gray’s Keywords is no doubt among
the most updated and relevant reference books. On the one hand, it covers emerging keywords in digital
media studies such as access, data, and surveillance, calling attention to these new frontiers of scholarship;
on the other, it also refreshes long-standing concepts like aesthetics, discourse, labor, and race, bringing
them into the conversation with the postcolonial, postracial landscape today. As a reference book in this
time of globalized media studies, it does have a problem in that the vast majority of its contributors are
scholars from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, thus having a limited scope in today’s
diversified scholarship. Nevertheless, as transnational media flows, social networks, and discourses of
modernity rise in many formerly “peripheral” parts of the world, most of the keywords in this book have
now become increasingly common concerns.

Online Tools for Scholarly Works

Like many books that now have complementary websites and online materials, Ouellette and Gray’s
Keywords and the NYU Press series also maintain an online counterpart that host postpublication updates,
open access chapters, teaching resources, and a collaborative learning platform (for Keywords for American
Cultural Studies, Burgett & Hendler, 2014). For now, the online contents of Ouellette and Gray’s Keywords
for Media Studies is still quite limited, with only several keyword articles, a sample syllabus for teaching,
and some meta information of the book. The blog-style website is more like a “trial version” of the full
International Journal of Communication 13(2019), Book Review Lingyu Wang 651

printed book, rather than a fully functional digital work in its own right. This lack of functionality is also a
problem that many other academic book websites now face.

In fact, digital reference tools have long proven powerful, and researchers have been routinely
using databases and online catalogues for their works. Given the nature of reference books that need
constant revision to keep up with academic works, both writers and readers of these books can benefit from
having them online. For editors, online books are easier to revise, without the burden of going through print
houses; for readers, online versions mean more affordable prices, more up-to-date contents, and more
flexible access. As reputed dictionaries and encyclopedias start to turn into online services, online keywords
lists—or, going one step further, online collaborative references for humanities and social sciences—now
seem to be a promising option. The subject of Keywords for Media Studies is by its nature elective and fast
updating, attracting emerging researchers from around the world, so bringing the book online would be an
advantageous step for both its contributors and its readers.

Last Thoughts

One thing that was missing in Ouellette and Gray’s Keywords for Media Studies but particularly
helpful in Williams’ Keywords is cross-reference. Pointing to other related keywords both within texts and at
the end of articles, cross-reference helps the reader connect concepts into a larger framework; the lack of
cross-reference rids Keywords for Media Studies of this structure. Admittedly, providing cross-reference
might be relatively easy for Williams, as he was writing on his own and knew his entire work, while doing
the same with so many individual authors can be difficult. Nevertheless, having a structure at hand allows
the reader to easily navigate through the keywords, and Ouellette and Gray also try to make up for this lack
of structure with the sample syllabus posted on the book’s website. The structure shown in the sample
syllabus helps in drawing out the shape of its subject matter.

Concerning the field’s shape, Ouellette and Gray’s Keywords for Media Studies does not try to
define media studies, but it does sketch a certain shape for the field, and this shape is not unbiased—this is
a problem that persists in all reference tools. In Keywords for Media Studies, this editing choice is promptly
recognized at the very beginning (p. 5); providing questions at the end of articles, the authors of the book
also invite readers to question the current states of the keywords. For readers, remembering these “meta”
reminders means to always reflect on what factors define media studies now, have defined it before, and
will define it in the future, factors such as economy, politics, technology, and the state of academia. Over
time, fields of scholarly studies will always pick up fresh words and revise or drop stale ones, thus growing
and becoming current again. Ouellette and Gray’s Keywords for Media Studies refreshes the printed map of
media studies for the digital now, and readers can bring it further forward by constantly questioning it with
new findings and understandings in the future.
652 Lingyu Wang International Journal of Communication 13(2019), Book Review

References

Bennett, T., Grossberg, L., Morris, M., & Williams, R. (Eds.). (2005). New keywords: A revised vocabulary
of culture and society. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Burgett, B., & Hendler, G. (Eds.). (2014). Keywords for American cultural studies. New York, NY: New York
University Press.

Chandler, D., & Munday, R. (2011). A dictionary of media and communication. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.

Hartley, J. (2011). Communication, cultural and media studies: The key concepts. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor &
Francis.

Peters, B. (Ed.). (2016). Digital keywords: A vocabulary of information society and culture. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.

Watson, J., & Hill, A. (Eds.). (2016). Dictionary of media and communication studies. London, UK: Credo
Reference.

Williams, R. (1985). Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. Cary, NC: Oxford University Press.